Like Wind Against Rock: A Novel

by Nancy Kim

  I was shocked to discover my personal profile being used to advertise your services. I did not give you permission to use my private information for your marketing purposes! The other picture is my mother. Please take down both pictures immediately!

  I smash the “Send” button with my trembling, enraged finger. It is now five forty-five. I pray that setmeup.com has customer service on Sundays. I shower and get dressed, since there is no going back to bed for me now.

  I hear Ahma turn on the sink on the other side of the house. It is a quarter past six. I check my email. There is a reply from setmeup.com. Incredible customer service. I open the message and read:

  Dear setmeup Member,

  As part of our registration process, every setmeup.com member is required to accept the terms of our standard online form agreement (the “Agreement”). Section 4.2 of the Agreement states as follows: “I hereby expressly agree, acknowledge and encourage setmeup.com to use any and all information that I contribute to the Website, including digital images, photos and my profile, for any purpose whatsoever, including for marketing, publicity and other public distribution. I hereby expressly relinquish ownership of any information that I upload and/or post to the Website and understand that such information becomes the property of setmeup.com in perpetuity.”

  As you can see from the above contractual language, you agreed to our Company’s policy when you signed up as a setmeup.com member and clicked “I agree” to the terms of our electronic agreement.

  Sincerely,

  Customer Services

  setmeup.com

  P.S. I didn’t realize that the pictures were a mother-daughter pair. That’s quite catchy! Thanks for the heads-up!

  I vaguely recall clicking on some agreement but don’t remember reading any of the terms. I try a different approach:

  Dear Customer Services representative,

  Thank you for your timely response to my email. Does this mean that you do not plan to take down the ads of my mother and me?

  Sincerely,

  Alice Chang

  I comb my soggy hair and blot it with a towel. I sit and wait. I hear Ahma get into the shower. I hit the “Refresh” button three times in rapid succession before a new email appears.

  Dear Ms. Chang,

  The profiles are part of our new marketing campaign and we believe that greater distribution to a wider viewer base will help our members successfully find mates! In fact, we believe this strategy will be so successful for our selected members that we envision that in the very near future, members will gladly pay for the extra visits to their profiles! Based upon your last email, we have made a few changes to our advertisement. Thank you for your input and we appreciate any suggestions you may have in the future.

  Sincerely,

  Customer Services

  setmeup.com

  I am impressed by their responsiveness, even though their response is not what I want. I switch computer tabs. My profile, and my mother’s, are still prominently displayed, but the captions have changed. Above mine are the words: Lonely daughter . . . , and above Ahma’s are the words that make up the rest of the question: . . . or lonely mama? Which one will you choose?

  My scream brings Ahma rushing into the room. Her hair is wet, and she is wearing a bra and a linen skirt.

  “What happened?”

  I close my eyes. She rushes over to see what I am looking at. She sucks in air so deeply that she makes a whooshing noise like the closing of a bus door.

  I open my eyes and peek at her out of the corners of my eyes. She is staring intently at our pictures.

  “Why you use that one?” she asks. “Make your nose look flat.”

  “It was the best one I could find.”

  “You should ask me. I take good one. You like my one?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I take myself.”

  She holds her arms straight out and makes an L shape with each hand, as though she is holding a camera. “Have to try five or six times. Not bad, huh?”

  “Aren’t you even embarrassed? Look at this! Right on the home page!”

  “Why embarrassed?”

  “Everyone can see that we’re looking for dates!”

  “That’s the point.”

  “No, the point is for single people to find us, not the general public.”

  “Maybe married people have single friends.” She pauses and tilts her head. “And maybe some single people too shy for internet dating. Why sign up if you want to hide?”

  “Don’t act like you’re not embarrassed. I know you are! Otherwise, why didn’t you tell me? You pretended that you met your dates at the gym!”

  “Not for my embarrassment. For yours.”

  “What do you mean mine?”

  Ahma sits down on my bed. Her pale stomach gently overlaps the waistband of her skirt, even though when she puts on her blouse and cinches her waist with a wide black leather belt, she will look as slender as a fashion model.

  “You don’t like me to date,” she says.

  “No . . .”

  “You want me to be widow like long-ago days. You want me to wear only black clothes every day. You want me to suffer for the rest of my life. You want to punish me.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Ahma scrutinizes me with unblinking black eyes, and I have to confess, “It’s not that I want you to suffer forever. I just want you to mourn, for a little while. You don’t even seem to miss Appa.”

  My eyes fill with tears, but Ahma’s face hardens as though someone has outlined her features with black crayon.

  “I already miss your father when he was alive. I already suffer for that.”

  I blink my tears away so that I can see her more clearly, but Ahma has turned her attention and her gaze back to the computer, her manner now brisk and businesslike.

  “Maybe we get more email now.”

  “I can’t believe you aren’t even bothered by this.”

  “Friends already know that we need date. Strangers don’t know us, so doesn’t matter.”

  “What about other people?”

  Ahma shrugs, but then her face freezes in alarm. “Uh-oh. They know I’m liar.”

  I realize what she means. If I’m her thirty-nine-year-old daughter and she is my fifty-five-year-old mother, that means she had me when she was sixteen. “You could have been a teenage bride. From the old country.”

  She shakes her head. “Nobody believe that.”

  “What did you tell your dates that met me? Like Stephen and that guy from last night?”

  “I tell them you thirty.”

  “And they believed you?” I ask, flattered.

  “They can’t tell. They think Asian people looks same,” she says. “We have to ask them to take down before my clients see. Important for broker to be honest.”

  “I already tried. I sent them an email this morning, and that just made everything worse.” I don’t explain how, and she doesn’t ask.

  “No send email.” She glances over at the clock. It is almost seven thirty. “Have to call. Personal contact most important. That’s what head agent in training says to me.”

  Ahma clicks through the setmeup.com website, and I am surprised at her skill at maneuvering through the internal web pages. She clicks on links and jumps from page to page like a child skipping through a meadow. She finds the customer service number, displayed on the new member registration page but nowhere to be found on the customer support page, and scribbles it on a piece of paper. I head downstairs to eat breakfast while she calls setmeup.com from the upstairs telephone. By the time I’ve rinsed out my cereal bowl and put it in the dishwasher, she has straightened out everything.

  “No problem. They have good customer service,” she says, looking at her watch. “Even so early.” In addition to wrestling with setmeup.com’s customer service, she has also managed to blow-dry her hair, apply makeup, and finish getting dressed. “They say take down tomorrow.”

  “What? That’s not
what they told me.”

  “Personal contact,” she says, nodding her head in agreement at her own statement. “Best way to solve problems.”

  After Ahma leaves, I crawl back into bed. Ahma handled everything so professionally. It’s a side of her that I’ve been seeing more of since Appa died but that I rarely saw growing up. Is that what it was? Did he stifle her ambitions? What did she mean when she said that she missed my father when he was alive, that she had already suffered for that?

  I try to lie still, but my legs feel jittery, and I rub the soles of my feet against the bedsheets. I don’t recall my parents ever arguing. There was no drama in my house when I was growing up. My mother never threw dishes, and my father rarely even raised his voice. They didn’t fight much, but did they love each other? I try to remember what they were like together. My memories are of me and my dad, or me and my mom. My dad taking me to the bookstore and letting me buy as many books as I wanted. My mom cooking dinner while I set the table. My dad taking me to school when I missed the bus. My mom shopping for back-to-school clothes and making me buy funny-looking pants because they were on sale. My dad coming home from work with a big smile on his face and a pack of gum just for me. But why can’t I remember them holding hands, giving each other a neck massage or a hug? Stealing a kiss when they thought I wasn’t looking? Where are the meaningful looks that I don’t understand, the private jokes? Where are the adult conversations whispered above my head about things they don’t want me to know?

  What I remember instead is my father sitting at the breakfast table reading the newspaper while my mother washes dishes. My father eating dinner while my mother darts about in the kitchen. Why am I not able to conjure up memories of them doing something—anything—together? I can’t recall a single family vacation when we were all together, but I know this can’t be true. We took several car trips, but I can only remember being with one of them at a time. At Disneyland, I remember laughing with my mother as we twirled in a teacup on the Alice in Wonderland ride, but I can’t remember where Appa was or what he was doing. I remember going to the Grand Canyon, and my father telling me that it was created by wind and water. I didn’t believe him. How could wind and water carve rock? He explained that it happened over a long period of time, over millions and millions of years. It all adds up, he said, it’s the nature of erosion. I looked down into the mile-deep canyon, striated with red that was also somehow gray, and green, and pink. I remember thinking that my father must have been mistaken, that this had to be the result of a meteor or the work of aliens, something more sudden and dramatic and catastrophic than the cumulative effect of wind against rock. I don’t remember asking my mother what she thought, because I don’t remember her being with us at all.

  Ahma comes home around four o’clock from her Sunday open house. She is in good spirits. Her cheeks are flushed, and her eyes bright and shiny.

  “Lots of offers today,” she says. “So many.”

  “Really? Serious buyers?”

  She laughs. “Not buyer! Date. Did you check?”

  “No,” I say.

  She waves the back of her hand. “Go check. You probably get lots, too.”

  I log onto my email account.

  “How many?” Ahma pops her head into my bedroom.

  “Forty-seven.”

  She snaps her fingers downward and raises her knee. “Dammit!”

  I turn to her, surprised.

  “I only got thirty-five,” she explains. “Good website. They know how to work.” She leaves me to my messages and goes downstairs to make dinner.

  I’m not sure whether Rick and I are exclusive, since we haven’t had that conversation yet, and although I’m not interested in dating anyone else, I decide to keep my setmeup account, at least for now. Ahma is right. I have a lot more messages today. I spend the next hour scanning through them. About half of them sound sex crazed: “You and your mom are hot! My dad and I would like to meet you!” “Lotus Flower and Lotus Bud, I want both . . . ,” “Alice, you look way younger than your mom and way hotter so I would pick you . . . ,” but some actually seem okay: “. . . enjoy hiking and reading good books . . . ,” “. . . ideal date is good books and strong coffee . . . ,” “. . . favorite meal is brunch . . . ,” “. . . write children’s books and make wood furniture . . .”

  By Monday morning, I have received a total of eighty-four profiles, and Ahma is prancing around the house with eighty-six setmeups in her inbox. Of these, I am still running at a rate of 50 percent loser/weirdos and the rest maybe normal. I still need to check the normal profiles against the ones that Ahma has. Any guy who is hitting on both the mom and the daughter is not anyone that either Ahma or I should ever meet.

  Rick calls me that evening, seemingly unaware of my new status as Miss Popularity. He is at the airport, on his way to visit a client in Portugal.

  “I already miss you,” he says. I think of the night we spent at his house. Just hearing his voice on the phone makes my heart beat faster and my palms sweat.

  “I miss you, too,” I say, wiping my hands on my jeans.

  After we end our conversation, Ahma pops into my room. She is in a chatty mood and sits down next to me on my bed. Now that we are no longer hiding our online dating from each other, we are free to share our dating likes and dislikes. I am surprised to hear that Ahma doesn’t really care if a potential date is rich.

  “Not poor,” she clarifies. “No freeloader. But doesn’t have to be rich. I can make my own money!” Her cheeks flush with pride.

  “But your profile makes you look like a gold digger.”

  “Why?” She looks offended, even angry.

  “All that stuff about designer handbags and fancy cars . . . it sounds like you’re looking only for rich guys.”

  “But that’s what I like!”

  “That question isn’t really asking you what you like. It’s asking you to present an image of yourself.”

  “What?”

  “You know, so people know what you’re like.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Oh, forget it.”

  “Why don’t you add more?”

  “More what?”

  “Make you seem so boring. You like sushi and movie. Big deal.” She rolls her eyes.

  “What do you want me to do, lie?”

  “No lie. Imagine.”

  “But I do like sushi and movie.”

  “Then you get boring guy. Do you want guy who like only sushi and movie? What about strong and handsome man with big brain? Maybe, like football and sudoku?”

  Now it’s my turn to roll my eyes.

  “Up to you,” she says with dramatic resignation, standing up to leave. “Your life.”

  ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I can tell there is something seriously wrong shortly after I arrive at the library on Tuesday. For one thing, Bertha hasn’t touched her scone, although she slurps noisily at her iced caramel mocha. Elaine looks paler than usual and doesn’t even glance up to say hello. They both look like they are about to cry.

  “Good morning,” I say cautiously.

  They both look at me as though I have cursed in church. I settle into my station, put my purse underneath my desk, and boot up the computer. “Is everything okay?”

  Bertha takes a loud sip of her drink.

  Elaine shakes her head. “Sam isn’t here again. He’s not coming in for a while.”

  Mr. Park was absent all last week.

  “He’s never absent,” she adds. “Definitely not for this long.”

  “When’s he coming back?” I ask. “Is he sick?”

  “Nobody knows. Sarah said that he’s out indefinitely.”

  “Did he get fired?”

  “No. But something happened to him. I could tell by the way Sarah looked when she told us. Something bad.”

  “Maybe he had an appendicitis attack?”

  Bertha shakes her head. “Sarah would have told us that.”
<
br />   Sarah is the assistant head librarian and their immediate supervisor.

  “Well, what did she say?”

  “She said that Sam wasn’t coming in for the rest of the month because something happened that she couldn’t get into. But she looked like she was about to cry.”

  “Do you think he was arrested?” Bertha asks. Elaine and I stare at her.

  “For what?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. You never know what anyone is really like. Maybe he was looking at kiddie porn on the internet.”

  My laugh is sharp. “Mr. Park? You’ve got to be joking.”

  “Or soliciting undercover cops disguised as teenagers in chat rooms.”

  “That’s sick,” I say, but then I remember my high school friend Megan, whose husband was arrested for doing just that, and I don’t ask any more questions.

  “You never know,” Elaine says.

  “I mean, do you ever really know anyone?” Bertha asks.

  They look at each other with wide eyes. I don’t believe that Mr. Park has been arrested for any internet crime involving teenagers, but there is no denying that something has happened to him, and whatever it is, it isn’t good. I wish I could convince myself that the anxiety I feel is purely compassion for Mr. Park, but I can’t help wondering whether something happened to Appa’s notebook. If Mr. Park was arrested for something, would they have confiscated his belongings and taken the notebook, too? Nobody even knows when Mr. Park will be back, and I can’t just sit and wait for him to return. Suddenly, I need that notebook more than anything. It is my only chance to know if my father meant to say anything to me, and to discover what I meant to him.

  There is a chance that the notebook is in his office. I wait until Elaine and Bertha are on a break, and then I sneak down the hallway toward Mr. Park’s office, trying to keep my stride even and purposeful. I turn the doorknob and am thankful that it’s not locked. The door swings open. The lights are on. I walk in, glance at the papers stacked neatly on his tidy desk. If the notebook is anywhere in this room, then it would be in the desk’s deep file drawer. This will only take a minute, but my heart is pounding like a jackhammer and I’m sure that Sarah can hear me all the way from the circulation desk. I walk behind the desk and pull open the drawer. I see hanging files but no notebook.